Scherer And Ouporov
TREE OF LIFE
TREE OF LIFE
artist statment
Oh, I who long to grow, I look outside myself, and the tree inside me grows. --Rainer Maria Rilke
The Tree of Life, a universal symbol found in nearly every religion and cultural mythology, has long been one of the most prevalent themes in our work. Our home in South Florida, once surrounded by lush vegetation and banyan trees, is now barren after two years of devastating hurricanes brought down mountains of uprooted trees. As we plant new trees and watch the rapid growth of life replacing that which was destroyed we are reminded daily of nature’s endless cycle of death, transformation and renewal. The banyan tree, representing to us the ultimate symbol of creation and regeneration, led us to the further exploration of the Tree of Life as is appears in various art historical forms and literature. Our recent works incorporate the results of our research into a body of egg tempera paintings on wood panel, DVD projection, and photographs printed on various media. .
Jacob’s Ladder, As Above So Below, Twilight (2004), Tree Whisperer (2005), and Emmerson (2004-6) are a part of our Celestial Alphabet series, in which we merged ancient sacred writing based on the stars into a symbolic landscape. This series also reflects our ongoing interest in linguistics and the origins of language.
Hands of My Mother, 2005 and Marisol’s Dream, 2005, are transitional pieces that incorporate excerpts from Susan Griffin’s poem, “Matter” (“Woman and Nature”, 1978):
“I know I am made from this earth, as my mother’s hands were made from this earth, as her dreams came from this earth and all that I know, I know in this earth, the body of the bird, this pen, this paper, these hands, this tongue speaking, all that I know speaks to me through this earth and I long to tell you, you who are earth too, and listen as we speak to each other of what I know: the light is in us.”
Talking Tree, 2006, is a turning point in our work and the first collaboration with our 3-year old son who invented a story about a talking tree filled with animals. The painting was inspired by a 15th century Persian miniature, “Alexander and the Talking Tree” as well as the spiraling motif in Gustav Klimt’s notorious “Tree of Life” frieze (1905-1911). Upon completion of this painting and after visiting the Fra Angelico exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, we began a large wall installation piece, Tree of Life, in which 12 round interchangeable panels depict floating winged figures, mounted upon a golden tree of life scheme based on our Talking Tree painting.
The Celestial Tree, 2006 began with a Tree of the Universe relief from China (168 AD) that we carved and gilded into the background of the wood panel. We later incorporated decorative motifs below the seated figure to reinforce the circular cosmic tree theme. The golden band of text, in Old Russian, is an ancient Chinese proverb “Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.”
The theme of angels, like the tree of life, appears in nearly every culture and major religion. We became interested in their depiction when doing research on the celestial alphabet and tree of life. Also referred to as the “angelic script”, the celestial alphabet was widely believed in the Renaissance to have been sent by messenger angels to form the original language of Eden with which Adam named all things. Angels are also present as guardians of the tree of life and knowledge. In many cultures they were seen as celestial intelligences that influence the movement of the heavenly bodies, understanding and communicating divine language to humankind.
Newborn, 2006, is the first of our angel depictions. Inspired by Fra Angelico’s paintings, which seem today so fresh and contemporary, we began to experiment with gilding by stamping, inscribing and painting the surface of the gold leaf with oil glazes. The text surrounding the infant, painted with gold mica powder, begins with a Native American (Seminole) song-poem, “Song for Bringing a Child into the World”: Let the child be born, you day-sun, circling around, you daylight, circling around, you night sun, circling around…and ends with a fragment of William Blake’s (1789) “A Cradle Song”:
Sweet dreams form a shade
O’er my lovely infant’s head;
Sweet dreams of pleasant streams’
By happy, silent, moony beams.
Sweet sleep with soft down
Weave thy brows an infant crown.
Sweet sleep, Angel mild,
Hover o’er my happy child.
In Guardian, 2006, the gilded tree is based on a bronze Tree of Life and Knowledge sculpture from India. (1336-1546) We became fascinated with this sculpture because images of birds and wings form a tree, thus merging the bird and tree as one unified form. The golden text painted below is Indian poet Sri Aurobindo’s, “A Child's Imagination”(1895-1908):
O thou golden image,
Miniature of bliss,
Speaking sweetly, speaking meetly!
Every word deserves a kiss.
Strange, remote and splendid
Childhood's fancy pure
Thrills to thoughts we cannot fathom,
Quick felicities obscure.
When the eyes grown solemn
Laughter fades away,
Nature of her mighty childhood
Recollects the Titan play;
Woodlands touched by sunlight
Where the elves abode,
Giant meetings,Titan greetings,
Fancies of a youthful God.
Gia, 2006, (in progress), is a variation of the tree-bird image, influenced by Alexander Fisher’s Art Nouveau “Peacock Sconce (1899). In this painting we contrasted yellow gold and platinum to emphasize the shape of the peacock-tree image, and outlined with red-earth the stylized curvilinear feather forms to emulate branches of a tree.
Since the beginning of our art career we have been inspired and relied upon the use of photography. Although we are known primarily for egg tempera paintings, silverpoint drawing, and intaglio prints, we only recently began to exhibit our photographic works. Our latest experimentations combine the earliest art and photo processes such as gilding and large format photography with the latest innovations in technology. As in all of our work they address universal ideas with highly symbolic imagery and the connection of humanity to the environment.
Printed in 2005, Tree-Rain, Ringing Rocks, Downpour, Umbilical Tree, and Jacob’s Ladder, are a part of the Celestial Alphabet series and the images that formed the basis for many of our paintings. All of these photo objects were created with a technique that we devised similar to the age-old method of producing mirrors. Combining the old with new, we printed these images on a transparent surface, duraclear mounted on plexiglass, and gilded the back with red clay bole and 22 k. gold leaf. The Gathering Tree (front), The Gathering Tree (back), and Roots, 2005, are large scale chromogenic prints. This banyan, an historical tree located in a national park on Fort Lauderdale beach, is a part of my (Suzanne) earliest childhood memories and for generations has been an important gathering place for families and visitors from around the world.
Tree-Rain, 2006, is a short DVD on a loop featuring a large scale banyan tree on a rainy day with text moving in a continuous vertical format emulating rain. The title and the piece were inspired by Russian Futurist Velimir Khlebnikov’s poem The Gul-Mullah’s Trumpet, in which he evokes ancient mystical associations about the banyan tree. The idea behind Tree-Rain began three years ago, while reading Russian Symbolist poet and theorist Andrei Bely’s Glossolalia, we discovered that many of our infant’s first attempts at pronouncing syllables and words corresponded linguistically to Bely’s concepts on the relationship between sound and the senses. A theory of the origin of the universe based on sound, Glossolalia is structured on a verbal and spatial logic based on repetition of sound, roots, and words. In one section of his poem, he plays on the interconnection of sounds, theoretically and mystically, with the letter “M”, such as in Am, Om, Mama, Dom (in Russian-home), Kram (Russian Cathedral), and amor. Taking note of our son’s first sounds and words, such as mama, mmm, yum, we compiled our own list of related maternal words such as womb, woman, man, warm, embryo, moloko (in Russian milk) and so on. Together with Bely, these words and sounds form a loop in the Tree-Rain film.
Scherer & Ouporov, 2006